Different Types of Routes, Static Routes and Dynamic Routes in Routing

Different Types of Routes: Static Routes and Dynamic Routes in Routing

In this article you will learn about different types of routes including static routes and dynamic routes.

Route: Route gives the information about to which interface data packets must be forwarded to the router. Router performs routing, the process of selecting the best path to reach the destination, with the help of routing table.

Routing table consists of the information about all the routes that are available to the destination. The router selects the best route based on metrics like Administrative Distance, Congestion and Bandwidth etc.

Static Routes:

The static routes are manually entered by an administrator manually. An administrator has to enter all the routes manually in the router. All the routes entered by the administrator are stored in a routing table.

The administrator has to manually update the routing table in case of any changes in the network. If not updated, the router forwards the packets to the same interface even though the interface is down.

This results in data loss. The static route must be configured on every router for gaining full connectivity between source and destination. As the router does not exchange routing information, it is difficult to select the best path for the router by itself.

The static routing consumes very few resources. The Static routing is good for the networks that are not changed very often.

The main disadvantage of static routing is that this is impractical for large networks. In case of any topology changes, the administrator has to manually update all the routers.

Dynamic routing protocols help the router to take intelligent decisions that helps router to forward the packet to the destination in the best path. When dynamic routing protocols are used, the routes are automatically updated. Routers exchange the information about the available routes among themselves.

If any route or interface is down, it is automatically updated by the adjacent routers.

When there are two or more routes available to reach the destination, dynamic routing helps to select the best path among the available routes. The best path is selected by considering congestion, bandwidth, administrative distance etc.

Dynamic routing makes the job of an administrator easy. Even the changes in the topology are automatically updated with the protocols that help the router to learn the routes.

The main disadvantages of using dynamic routing is that the dynamic routing protocols puts more load on CPU, consumes more bandwidth as more updates are shared at regular intervals.